Worst Gets Best of Mystics

Mercury 70, Mystics 69

A season full of low points for the Washington Mystics somehow got even worse yesterday.

Without injured star Chamique Holdsclaw, the Mystics missed a last-second shot to lose in double overtime to the worst team in WNBA, falling to the Phoenix Mercury at home, 70-69. The loss was their 20th of the year.

Reserve forward Jocelyn Penn, who had a team- and career-high 13 points, drove in for a layup with just under two seconds to go in the second overtime, but the shot hit off the glass and grazed the front of the rim before being controlled by Phoenix's Slobodanka Tuvic.

"I don't know what happened," said Penn, who had made the same shot against Phoenix's Anna DeForge with 40 seconds remaining to tie the score at 69. "It just felt like I was wide open, and then when I turned and shot it, it felt like it was going in. It was just like what I practice every day."

With 1.2 seconds remaining, the Mercury (5-19) called a timeout and then inbounded the ball safely to run out the clock and escape.

Washington played without Holdsclaw, who pulled out of the lineup minutes before game time with a stiff neck. The team's leading scorer collided with another player in Friday's win at Connecticut. She didn't come off the court at the time but woke up yesterday with a soreness Coach Marianne Stanley likened to whiplash.

"Could we have used what she could have done today?" Stanley said. "Yes. But that's the way it goes."

Stanley was more concerned with what her healthy players did in Holdsclaw's absence. She grimaced as she glanced down at the box score: Washington shot 56 percent from the free throw line on 10-of-18 shooting and set a season high in turnovers.

"It's one thing to be upset by the fact that you don't have opportunities," Stanley said. "It's another one when you have the opportunities and you don't convert them.

"How many layups did we miss? Missed layups. Missed free throws. 21 turnovers."

Washington also played much of the game without Coco Miller, who was limited to 22 minutes after spraining her right ankle midway through the first half. Miller was running toward the basket on defense when she landed awkwardly on the ankle and came up holding back tears.

She played sporadically after the break and came in for the last nine seconds of the first overtime but was otherwise forced to watch the final minutes unravel from the sideline. Both she and Holdsclaw are day-to-day.

"As long as I can walk, I'm going to play," Miller said.

The game, which matched the two conference's last-place teams, featured 14 ties and eight lead changes. The Mystics (6-20) trailed throughout the majority of the first half -- except for a brief one-point lead -- but recovered after the break to stay within two baskets for the final 13 minutes of regulation.